SDG Reviews ‘Maleficent’ (19970)

Hollywood’s latest revisionist fairy tale is a warmed-over Frozen, with less interesting characters and a startlingly dark subtext.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one (or if you don’t want to be spoiled on the film, which I think you probably should be).

This revisionist take on a classic fairy tale gives us not one but two heroines, who share a special bond: an older one with magical powers and a young princess innocently devoted to the first.

At times their relationship is strained; the older one — an archetypal witch-villainess in the traditional story, though she’s rehabilitated here — even smites the young princess with her powers, dooming her to eventually fall into a deathlike state.

The young princess grows up isolated and alone due to her parents’ efforts to protect her from the other heroine’s powers. Meanwhile, the witchy heroine, rejected by society, withdraws to barren wastelands and uses her power over nature to surround herself with nearly impenetrable boundaries on all sides. (She also creates a magical sidekick, a nonhuman character given the powers of human speech and thought.)

There’s a cute but irrelevant male love interest, and some noise about true love’s kiss, and how he might save the stricken heroine from her deathlike fate — but, no, he’s ultimately useless. Only girl power can save the day!

Finally, there’s the real villain: a royal, patriarchal figure who should be a good guy but isn’t — who cynically uses the girlish romantic affection of one of the heroines against her, plotting to kill her to seize the throne. In a climactic conflict, he sneaks up behind the magical heroine with a drawn blade and tries to strike her down by surprise.

Sound familiar?

It’s fair to say that Disney’s Maleficent plays to an extent as warmed-over Frozen. This is not a good thing, even, I think, if you are a fan of Frozen. (I wasn’t a fan of Frozen, though I didn’t hate it either.) Certainly Frozen is superior to Maleficent, the latest dark, subversive live-action retelling of a classic fairy tale — in this case, Sleeping Beauty, as told in the classic 1959 Disney cartoon (the one Disney fairy tale between Pinocchio and Beauty and the Beast that approaches greatness).

Practically every character in Frozen is more interesting than anyone in Maleficent, though the latter has one great asset towering above its defects: Angelina Jolie as the title character. What Johnny Depp couldn’t do in Alice in Wonderland, Charlize Theron couldn’t do in Snow White and the Huntsman and nobody in Oz the Great and Powerful could do, Jolie does here: Through sheer charisma, she makes the film watchable when nothing else does.

Alas, Jolie is only allowed to play the iconic title character in any way approaching the figure we know from Sleeping Beauty in one sequence: the nominal christening scene in which the good fairies give the newborn princess Aurora their gifts, and Maleficent curses her to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel before the sun sets on her 16th birthday and die — or, as the curse runs here, to fall into an eternal sleep from which only true love’s kiss will awaken her.

You might be thinking: Isn’t that bit about the bit about eternal sleep and true love’s kiss the third good fairy’s mitigation of Maleficent’s curse of death? That’s the way it runs in the canonical story, yes. Here, though, although the third fairy is interrupted from giving her gift by Maleficent’s arrival, just as in the canonical story, the film never bothers to get back to the third fairy’s gift.

You see, the good fairies (Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Leslie Manville, all wasted) are irrelevant, impotent and ridiculous. That’s because they’re complicit tools of the patriarchy, which robs women of their power.

If you think I’m exaggerating, consider the opening act, in which Maleficent is left maimed and traumatized when her childhood sweetheart lulls her to sleep before hacking off her powerful wings — a metaphorical rape, or perhaps genital mutilation (against which Jolie has been a public campaigner). Either way, a pretty dark subtext for a PG movie.

Why does he do that? Because he happens to be Aurora’s royal father-to-be Stefan (Sharlto Copley), and Maleficent’s wings are his ticket to ensure his succession from the previous king, who is dying from an ill-fated battle against Maleficent and her fellow magical creatures who live on the Moors.

Why did the previous king make war against the denizens of the Moors? Well, because that’s what ignorant, hate-filled patriarchal brutes do, of course: attack whatever is different from them, whatever they don’t understand. Also, greed, since we’re told the Moors have great treasures. Bottom line: Humans are rotten, especially men, while magical earth creatures are good and live in harmony with one another.

Welcome to another aggrieved feminist fairy tale brought to you by screenwriter Linda Woolverton, who also wrote Alice in Wonderland — another film I didn’t care for but prefer to this one. (First-time director Robert Stromberg was a visual-effects artist on Alice, Oz the Great and Powerful and Avatar; this film looks like a generic mashup of those with no distinctive visual signature of its own.)

Before Stefan’s treachery, Maleficent was a good fairy, despite having devil horns and an obviously evil adjectival name meaning the opposite of “beneficent.” I have no objection to Maleficent starting out good, but she should have had a different name initially, like Satan originally being called Lucifer.

Now Maleficent (I’ll call her M for short) has become a bitter soul who no longer believes in true love, which is why she places the seemingly merciful clause into the curse on the princess. It’s M’s way of punishing Stefan for his treachery, you see. I’m not sure I want to live in a cinematic universe in which horse-faced Sharlto Copley can rock Angelina Jolie’s world that badly, but there it is.

As royal villains go, Stefan is far less interesting and compelling than Frozen’s Hans, who was handsome, brave, charismatic and could carry a tune. Hans was probably originally written as a hero, and could have been Disney’s most compelling heroic male character ever — certainly since the original Prince Philip in Sleeping Beauty — had it not been necessary to turn him at the last minute into a villain to compensate for the decision to make Elsa a heroine rather than a complex villainess.

Maleficent’s Prince Philip (Brenton Thwaites), although a perfectly nice guy from what little we see of him, may be the most irrelevant love interest in Hollywood fairy-tale history. To say he doesn’t hold a candle to Frozen’s Kristoff would be an understatement. Kristoff actually saves Anna’s life at one point; Philip does nil. (Someone, not M, does transform into a dragon at the climax, but if you’re hoping to see Philip battle it, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Needless to say, it’s a good dragon.)

After one brief, unremarkable exchange with Aurora in the forest, Philip spends most of his time in an enchanted sleep, with M levitating him around like a comical prop, not unlike the corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s.

In the classic version, Maleficent kidnaps Philip to prevent the kiss of true love from awakening Aurora. Here, she kidnaps him in order to bring him to the castle in the hope that he can awaken her, which, of course, he can’t. Not that it matters much; Aurora is asleep so briefly they should have called her Napping Beauty.

You see, after cursing the newborn princess, M quickly gets over her brief bout of sheer evil, lapsing instead into ironic cynicism. In this version, not only does M keep track of Aurora at all times, she’s actually the one keeping her alive despite the bumblings of the three incompetent “good” fairies.

You might think M is keeping Aurora alive in order to let the curse play out. However, meaningful croaks from her raven ally Diablo — or Diaval, as he introduces himself here when Maleficent turns him into a human (Sam Riley) in order to save him from some mean people protecting their crops — are clearly meant to suggest that the supposed queen of darkness is going soft on the girl.

When M actually meets the 15-year-old Aurora (Elle Fanning, managing the preternatural winsomeness Kristen Stewart’s Snow White lacked), she’s quickly won over by the latter’s goodness and sweetness. Aurora, correctly recognizing M as the protective presence hovering over her since infancy, actually calls her “my fairy godmother.” Pretty soon, M is regretting ever cursing the girl over what was, after all, a grudge against the father; she even tries to revoke the enchantment, but alas, she made it too strong.

And so the story grinds on to the bitter end, in which the power of evil patriarchy is broken, sisterhood lives happily ever after, and Prince Philip grins stupidly, because he has no reason to be here, really.

Strangely, despite the film’s feminist leanings, Aurora herself is a passive princess of the old-school type, whose most subversive act is loving the title character.

Is it too much to hope that someday Hollywood will make fairy tales with strong, admirable heroines and strong, admirable heroes? Maybe, too, just to mix things up, the traditional villains can be evil again, someday.

Steven D. Greydanus is the Register’s film critic and creator of Decent Films.
He is studying for the permanent diaconate for the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey.
Follow him on Twitter.

Caveat Spectator:Fantasy action violence and some disturbing images. Too much for younger kids.

I disagree with this column in most ways. Maleficient is a good girl (fairy), who is horribly wronged and becomes obsessed with vengeance. Her lust for revenge leads her to commit a terrible act, which she eventually comes to regret. In the end she finds both forgiveness and redemption. I personally felt that being forgiven by her innocent victim was a powerful moment with a surprisingly Catholic feel.

As for this being a rehash of Frozen, I can not speak to that because I did not watch Frozen.

Posted by Ms. G. on Friday, Jun 13, 2014 9:20 PM (EDT):

Guess I’ll be the dissenter here, but my daughters, their friends and I all liked it, though it’s an uneven movie. Visually the movie’s depiction of the fairyland and woods was very pretty. Yes, the obvious tilt against “patriarchy” was annoying. Ditto the “perfect harmony” of the movie-universe fairy world. However, Angelina Jolie was wonderful in the role. Maleficent was horribly wronged, let her anger consume her to the point she cursed an innocent person, gradually let love back into her heart, repented the wrong she did and tried to make things right. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but it wasn’t all bad. I was sorry to see that King Stefan was an obsessed nutcase in this movie, but history has shown that not every princess was blessed with a sane father.

Posted by mary on Monday, Jun 9, 2014 11:59 PM (EDT):

why do you call Sharlto Copley “horse-faced” in the review? Are you referring to his character or to the actor’s physical attributes? Thanks.

Posted by zee on Monday, Jun 9, 2014 9:50 PM (EDT):

Sigh.

Glad I read this before seeing it. I mean, I kind of figured it was going to be bad, but I love me some complex, tragic villains who are still Evil with a capital ‘E’, and I loved the design of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, so I was still holding desperately onto a tiny sliver of hope that it might still be compelling in places, or at least watchable. :(

But it’ll all be okay. I survived the prequels turning Darth Vader into some whiny emo kid, and between Wicked and Oz the Great and Powerful there’s not much left of the Wicked Witch…and now I guess it’s time for another iconic villain to bite the dust. It may be that these things get easier as they go.

Can’t wait for the Batman film in a decade or so that paints the Joker as a tragic and sympathetic hero and Batman as a brutal monster who caused his disfigurement and will now go to any lengths to cover it up…Also he’s rich. And white. And he has morals and stuff. Blech. Bruce Wayne’s irredeemable villainy should be self evident to any modern movie goer.

Posted by Clark on Saturday, Jun 7, 2014 11:25 PM (EDT):

Steven,

Thanks for the thorough and admirably well thought out response. I really respect your position now, and realize that the tone of my original message was out of line. For that I apologize. I definitely see where you’re coming from.

As for Kristoff being flat, while he may, in principle, be a more interesting character than Stefan or Aurora, I’d argue that the “interestingness” of a character lies more in the execution than the idea. On paper, maybe Kristoff is interesting (I honestly can’t see this, but agree to disagree), but in the finished product he is scarcely developed (a problem with the film in general) and is almost irrelevant to the plot (if he were excised, it wouldn’t take much effort to rework the story). On the other hand, Aurora and Stefan are tangibly crucial to the story, and are given enough time to breathe and develop as characters - Stefan’s arc, which could’ve easily been sidelined like so many blockbuster villains, is developed over the course of several scenes occurring alongside the primary plot.

Posted by Jeff on Saturday, Jun 7, 2014 12:05 PM (EDT):

I had hoped that the success of True Grit, which was both a box office success and one of the best movies in the past 10 years, would have somehow spawned the production of a couple more authentic, honest-to-goodness westerns, but alas.

Posted by The Ubiquitous on Tuesday, Jun 3, 2014 12:20 AM (EDT):

SDG: Likely? Certain. Writes TIME, a headline: “A Chilling Way to Die at the Box Office: Make a Western.”

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Jun 2, 2014 3:46 PM (EDT):

@SDG: Or at least that we want semi-“family friendly” “subversive modern takes”, without Seth MacFarlane’s foul mouth and obsession with sexual deviancy.
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And, maybe (I’ve seen reviews complaining about it), with no sympathetic portrayals of Nazi butchers—the new Lone Ranger made Tonto a Comanche, and Comanches were as monstrously evil as the Nazis. Actually most of the people under Nazi Germany and serving in its army weren’t war-criminals, but essentially all Comanche men were. Your Decent Films reviews have mentioned the practices of modern human traffickers—well that’s what the Comanche were, the way the Navajo are herdsmen. Apaches and Sioux took slaves, and probably believed that they had sexual rights to them; but the Comanche ALWAYS gang-raped their post-pubescent female captives, unless they were virgins (because that lowered the resale value)...but if a virgin were ransomed, they raped her before returning her.
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A fact of the Indian Wars that doesn’t fit the usual narrative: the US could’ve quite legally—by the standards NOW—hanged the entire adult male Comanche population as war-criminals. (The Comanche also literally genocided one entire branch of the Apaches.) We didn’t, either because we had ethical reservations about wiping out an entire culture, or because of a racist double standard. Either way, the Comanche were shown absolutely unprecedented mercy.

Posted by Mark Wilson on Monday, Jun 2, 2014 1:43 PM (EDT):

I thought that Maleficent was a 100% fairy tales that showed how one can choose evil and how one can choice good. The king was so consumed by guilt over his sins but didn’t think of repenting of them but lashing out in vengeance against Maleficent for his crimes. She repented of her crimes and proved to be the better person. If you prefer Maleficent as a villain there is the animated version. I think the movie still offers a moral lesson about good/bad and the choices that we make that make them so. Steven your review is great as always. People can always look at movies and come away from two different outlooks. On a side note, it looks like Neighbors is the only successful summer comedy. Is that because the others were not advertised enough? Mom’s went up against it. Blended and West both went up against some big blockbusters. Would they have fared better if they were not released opposite them?

Good news: A far more offensive film, A Million Ways to Die in the West, flopped.

Bad news: Between A Million Ways to Die in the West and The Lone Ranger, the likely lesson for Hollywood is not “No more subversive modern takes on our heroes and heroines,” but “No more Westerns.”

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Jun 2, 2014 12:41 PM (EDT):

@The Ubiquitous: Among the Indians where I live (fully 1/8 of my town is Native American), women owned all the property, and descent was through their line—and yet men still paid “bride-price”. The rationale, I think, was that a man who could get together a big enough gift for his prospective wife’s parents, was a man who could be trusted to till her fields and tend her herds. (Their division of labor was identical with almost every “patriarchal culture”—a Navajo man’s job was to plant his wife’s corn, bring her game, and fight her enemies, and later to tend her sheep; a woman’s job was to bear children, weave clothes and blankets, and cook food. That division of labor predates agriculture, it’s almost uniform across all humans—Hopi men weave, not women, but mostly because Spider Grandmother’s “medicine” is too dangerous to let women near it.)
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You could make a case that Beauty and the Beast is about “I can change him”, but, of course, however much we tell our daughters not to believe that, the fact is that women HAVE been able to change bad men. Several of them became saints of the Church in the process. (Just because something may not be a good policy doesn’t mean it’s necessarily WRONG, nor that it shouldn’t be the basis of a story; one probably shouldn’t bring asceticism within appreciable sight of suicide, but that doesn’t make Francis of Assisi an inappropriate subject for literature.)

Posted by Andrew on Monday, Jun 2, 2014 12:19 PM (EDT):

Perhaps after this, Snow White, and the disaster that was Lone Ranger, Disney will finally learn that we don’t want “subversive” modern takes on our heroes and heroines.

Posted by mrscracker on Monday, Jun 2, 2014 8:59 AM (EDT):

Marcus ,
Strong doesn’t always translate to “decent.” Unfortunately.
And it was “Rhett” Butler, not “Rex.”

“So for the most part the same as a hero. Or some unlikely combination of helpless/needing to be rescued and strong super heroine.”

(rechecks listed heroines)

Um, no. No, not at all.

Posted by The Ubiquitous on Sunday, Jun 1, 2014 11:29 PM (EDT):

I tried bringing up Beauty and the Beast once, and it degenerated into a polemic against the original fairy tale. Apparently, there’s a theory of feminist criticism which has determined that Beauty and the Beast was anti-woman propoganda. Women should not have to put up with brutish men! They should not be forced to remain in unhappy marriages! Stop enforcing the patriarchal dowry system! It was something like that, anyway.

Posted by Keary Onken on Sunday, Jun 1, 2014 7:07 PM (EDT):

One last thought:

Disney actually DID make a movie with a strong female character AND a strong male character: Beauty and the Beast.

Why does no one seem to remember this movie in these sorts of discussions? Belle is strong, intelligent, caring. She sacrifices for her father, stands up to the Beast when he’s being a massive jerk, and only begins to warm to him after he apologizes and acts human. She is no weak sop of a damsel waiting around for her prince to come. She has agency, and has it in spades—but not at the expense of the male characters around her.

The Beast is strong as well. Further more—he changes, he evolves as a character. Selfish, brutish, and overbearing in the beginning, he rides after her when he scares her off and saves her from the wolves, and afterwards is man enough to apologize for his brutish behavior. He then changes, become more civilized and kind, becoming someone that Belle can love, all while still staying a strong, very masculine character (I could go on and on about the ages old “woman as civilizing influence” motif here, but I won’t).

Some might criticize the film for the portrayal of Belle’s father as being in the “bumbling dad” mode, but I have always seen it less as the “dad as goofus,” stereotype and more as the “pure intellectual who lacks a certain amount of common sense,” stereotype so it never really bothered me. Furthermore, when it counts, he is willing to sacrifice for his daughter—risking societal mockery, his liberty, and even his very lie for her.

In short, this was a film that managed to have a strong female lead w/o needing to lessen the male characters around her. That had interesting characters w/o compromising its moral storytelling. Probably why it has always been my absolutely favorite, bar none, of all the Disney movies, animated or otherwise, and why I cannot understand why it always gets left out in these discussions….

Posted by Tom in AZ on Sunday, Jun 1, 2014 1:00 PM (EDT):

The thing that most irritates me is, aside from the fact fairies in folklore are always fairly hierarchical (the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, for example, or the gang of oni led by Ibaraki-doji and Shuten-doji), they sure as HECK don’t all live in harmony with each other. Those curses they lay on humans for (what seem to us) minor slights, they’re quite as likely to lay on each other.
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Want to know what fairies are really like? Well. Hans Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” is based on the same legend as Dvorak’s opera “Rusalka”, but in the Czech version, the King of the Lake is Hastrman, AKA Vodnik, AKA Bubak…which last word means “boogieman”. He’s known for sitting by the riverbanks and making a sound like a baby, then stealing the soul of anyone who comes to look, and putting it in his bag. On moonlit nights he can be heard, sitting by the riverbank and sewing clothes for his stolen souls, and singing: “Shine, moonlight, shine, let my needle sew.” (The Dvorak tone-poem “Vodnik” or “The Water-Goblin” uses the Czech lyrics to the song as the basis for their tune.)
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The witch that Rusalka (the mermaid) seeks out, is known as Jezsibaba. In Czech. She’s better known here by the Russian form of her name—Baba Yaga. She has a hut on chicken legs that dances…and skulls, impaled on spikes, sprout from the ground in its path, like flowers following Aslan. Their eyes glow, which she uses as yard-lighting. She has iron jaws and drinks blood. She can be bargained with, and might take pity on people, but she is not GOOD, and the idea of painting her as a victim of anyone, except possibly Tsar Koschei the Deathless, ruler of the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom beyond thrice-nine lands (and even he is usually at best her rival), is LAUGHABLE.

Posted by Michael on Sunday, Jun 1, 2014 10:26 AM (EDT):

I was at Disney World a couple of weeks ago and Malificient was everywhere. But it was old-school malificient Malificient.

Posted by Keary Onken on Saturday, May 31, 2014 11:53 PM (EDT):

A comment made on another reviewer’s webpage likened the film to this awful Transformers fanfic (of which I cannot imagine anything more horrendous myself) he’d read once, where the Decepticons where all given humanizing backstories and turned into tragic heros.

What I’ve called the film’s “aggrieved feminist” ideology (the adjective “aggrieved” is important, as I don’t ascribe a pejorative sense to “feminist”) doesn’t rest on depicting all the male characters as evil. It rests on showing how patriarchal society corrupts men and victimizes women, robbing women of their power and freedom.

Patriarchy causes fear, hatred and war. Non-patriarchal societies are peaceful and harmonious. This includes the anarchic faery world of the Moors (n.b. Maleficent is not a queen, merely the faery world’s “fiercest protector”) as well as the united kingdom ruled in the end by Queen Aurora.

Notice that the old patriarchal regime apparently permitted no queens regnant; the dying king could not be succeeded by one of his daughters, but only by a man designated by the king, who should marry one of the princesses, making her queen consort and himself king. In other words, in this patriarchal world the princesses matter only as a prize to be won and a stepping-stone to the throne.

Stefan is corrupted by greed and ambition, vices instilled in him by the twisted values of his patriarchal milieu. Ambition for patriarchal power moves Stefan to betray whatever love or affection he has for Maleficent, committing the heinous metaphorical rape/mutilation.

This rape/mutilation sequence is not incidental. It is central to Maleficent’s arc and the arc of the story. This is what patriarchy induces men to do to women.

Thus the three “good fairies,” since they accept Stefan’s reign, cannot be either good or powerful. They are silly, feeble and utterly incompetent. Aurora would have died many times over had she been left to them; only Maleficent’s hidden goodness keeps the princess alive.

Aurora’s mother, the daughter of one bad king and the wife of another, is such a weak character she’s barely in the film at all. Stefan himself is barely aware of her, even when he hears she is dying (and the film takes no further interest in her after that; we never even hear that she has actually died).

Stefan doesn’t even really care all that much about Aurora herself. His overarching obsession is his enemy Maleficent. Nothing induces such fear and hatred in the hierarchy as female power.

The very fact that the film has turned Maleficent into a wrongly demonized heroine is a deliberate subversion not only of patriarchy generally but of the entire Christian moral order (with its patriarchal deity, priesthood, rules and so forth).

In the 1959 Disney cartoon, Maleficent is an archetypal witch explicitly in league with “the powers of hell.” At the climax she adopts the form of a satanic dragon, and does battle with a heroic knight whose armor (supplied by the good fairies) overtly recalls Ephesians 6, including a “sword of truth” and a “shield of virtue” that actually bears the emblem of a cross. It’s as straightforward a depiction of iconic good vs. iconic evil as you’ll find in the Disney pantheon.

Maleficent baldly, straightforwardly inverts this: The female figure “demonized” by the patriarchal Christian version of the story is actually the heroine, and the patriarchal society that demonized her is the real evil.

Maleficent’s raven ally “Diaval”’s name is hardly even altered from Diablo, the name of his animated counterpart. Woolverton treads as closely to the theme of sympathy for the devil as she possibly can. It’s not much of a step from Maleficent to the Gnostic theme of Satan as a heroic rebel against the tyrant deity, changes of which have been rung in our times by Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, among others.

The one lone bit of counter-evidence to all this is Prince Philip, who is a prince and yet a nice guy. Frankly, he’s a vestigial leftover of the earlier myth without much of a role in this film, except to attest the impotence of the key theme of true love’s kiss. Otherwise, as I said, he has no real reason to be here, no dramatic function to perform. His sole role is to be useless.

P.S. I won’t argue with you regarding characters, except to say that if you can contrive to find Kristoff from Frozen “flat,” yet find Stefan or pretty much anyone in Maleficent other than the title character in any way interesting, I don’t know how much common ground we’re liable to find.

Posted by Alex Anderson on Saturday, May 31, 2014 8:57 PM (EDT):

SDG: “I dunno. I think it would be a better film if Jolie were more of a ‘monster woman from hell.’”

Please don’t wish the Beowulf movie on anyone.

Posted by Clark on Saturday, May 31, 2014 8:48 PM (EDT):

Steven, I was very skeptical of this film from the moment it was announced (and your review only reinforced my skepticism), but upon seeing it, was pleasantly surprised - shocked, even. While it’s not without flaws by any means, I do find it to be one of the year’s strongest blockbusters thus far (better than, for instance, the tremendously overrated X-Men: Days of Future Past). The three primary characters are well-cast - Jolie is, of course, the highlight, but as you noted, Fanning is a great fit for Aurora and Copley is a solid villain - and it’s competent (if not outstanding) across the board on a technical level.

It seems to me that your criticisms are based primarily on a supposed feminist agenda, which, I think, has been blown far out of proportion. The fact that the film’s cast happens to be comprised almost entirely of females hardly makes it an indictment of “patriarchal power” - you yourself point out that Aurora isn’t exactly given anything particularly subversive to do. The presence of Philip (as comically underused as he is) seems a sufficient rebuttal to the notion that “ALL men are evil.” Maleficent’s rhetoric against greed, ambition, and other vices isn’t linked to any gender-based dichotomy. Heck, in the original Sleeping Beauty the fairies are the main characters who push the plot forward - does this make that film feminist as well?

I also thought that the film subverted the “kiss of true love” trope far more meaningfully than Frozen did. In fact, as one who (like yourself) wasn’t a fan of Frozen, I find Maleficent to be superior in just about every area, particularly in the area of interesting characters. No one in Frozen was given sufficient time to be fleshed out, whereas in Maleficent a good chunk of the film is dedicated to building and exploring the Aurora/Maleficent dynamic.

You’re definitely right about Philip, though - he was amusingly superfluous. I burst out laughing when he came out of nowhere to appear in the final scene and could hardly be consoled. I didn’t think they could make a character flatter than Kristoff, but lo and behold, they did.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Saturday, May 31, 2014 7:33 PM (EDT):

1988-2013, expanded beyond feature animation, also gives you GunXSword, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Gungrave, Outlaw Star, all 5 Slayers TV anime, Gundam Wing, and Rozen Maiden. From the West, you get the DC Animated Universe and a couple of decent Marvel shows, as well as Transformers Prime—and the Hanna Barbera revival of the 90s with shows like Powerpuff Girls and Johnny Bravo (which I SWEAR has a “Perelandra” reference, in the episode where he accidentally sells his soul to the devil).
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If you’re expanding “animation” to include “puppetry”, that time-period also gives you…Mystery Science Theater 3000! Not that the puppetry was actually what you would be watching that for.

Heh. Oh, I wasn’t regretting my choice. I’m pretty sure I’d stick with it. (For what it’s worth, losing Looney Tunes would be a grievous blow, equal to losing the four early Disney greats; however, I’m not really hung up on “Rocky & Bulwinkle,” myself.)

That said, I don’t think I can claim Babe, or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Fair is fair; a story set in a live action world isn’t an animated film, even if it has animated elements. (By that standard, though it would cost me far less, I would also cede Disney’s Dinosaur, even if Disney now counts it as one of their animated features.)

Posted by The Ubiquitous on Saturday, May 31, 2014 6:46 PM (EDT):

SDG:

Fear not! If we’re extending this past feature animation, know that your time period would also include the single best Saturday Morning cartoon ever, Batman: The Animated Series, not to mention Duck Tales, Tale Spin, and some other really distinct children’s toons of varying quality. (Gargoyles, Bonkers, Freakazoid, X-Men, Reboot.)

In the realm of animation maybe too mature for children, it would also include the best Batman movie ever made (Mask of the Phantasm), several classic anime series (Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and its sequels and movies) and the entire directorial output of the late Satoshi Kon.

These two categories combined, plus the addition of Babe—- yes! That’s live-action/animation hybrid, technically!—- and you may yet beat out any single animation studio from Howard’s era.

You may not beat out the combined might of Looney Tunes with Rocky and Bulwinkle, but you’d come darn close.

Posted by Kevin on Saturday, May 31, 2014 4:48 PM (EDT):

“Through sheer charisma, she makes the film watchable when nothing else does.”

I hope this was a joke. Angelina Jolie is the main reason I won’t see this movie.

Posted by Mrs. Baker on Saturday, May 31, 2014 3:43 PM (EDT):

SGD, based on many of your reviews I take the above statement about waiting until the movie goes to the cheap theaters one step further…wait until such disappointments are free at the library. Seriously, SOOOO glad I read the one about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. That movie should have been called “Peter Jackson’s Tales of Middle Earth—Part II”. My husband and I were prepared for the uber-badness and were not surprised—though we still guffawed at the barrel-riding scene and the blatant lack of interest in plot-line or character arcs. Way to take a good story and make it “unwatchable”. Glad we didn’t waste precious child-feeding salary on brain junk-food. You save us a lot of regrets.

Posted by Daniel H on Saturday, May 31, 2014 12:57 PM (EDT):

Too bad. I thought the trailer looked nice and had an intriguing premise—even Disney’s most evil villain of all time had to have been young once, so what happened to her?—but I guess there was no way Disney was ever going to end this like it would need to end (i.e., the way Sleeping Beauty ends, but as Shakespearean tragedy).

Someone on Rottentomatoes was wondering aloud how this would have turned out if someone like del Toro (Spanish movie del Toro in full “Pan’s Labyrinth” mode, presumably) had made it instead. That I’d pay money to see. This, not so much.

<b>What would a strong heroine be like in a film that also has a strong hero?’
***************************
Scarlett O’Hara.<b>
I disagree. The only decent person in Gone with the Wind is Rex Butler. Scarlett is a scheming manipulative excuse for a woman and the Melanie is weak.

In all the movies I have seen, the only heroine I admire is Maria in the Sound of Music: strong yet gentle, funny and wise.

Posted by Howard on Saturday, May 31, 2014 2:01 AM (EDT):

SDG said, “If I had to pick a five-year period of animation history to show my kids and stick to it ....” If we’re talking ANIMATION, not just feature-length films but shorts and even television, I’d take 1939-1964 for my 25-year window. That would include the best run of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, and the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, as well as most of the Golden Age of Disney. There are things I would miss, yes, but this would cover about 90% of my favorites. I’ll grant that there weren’t many strong animated heroines in that era, though.

Posted by Melchior Merrowson on Friday, May 30, 2014 7:59 PM (EDT):

I just see it as another “Let’s Pity, then Glorify the Villain” nonsense. Throw in Femi-Nazism, and you got the perfect mixture to fool anyone with a bleeding heart, or overly guilty conscience. Tis sad, indeed.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Friday, May 30, 2014 7:46 PM (EDT):

My brother just got back from seeing it, as part of a farewell party for a friend of his who’s moving out of state. His words? “It’s so bad, Thomas. SO BAD.” This he said after calling our sister to tell her not to see it—the first thing he did once he came in the house.
-
Nuff, as Stan Lee would say, sed.

Bambi is unquestionably one of the most gorgeous animated films ever made, and one of four early Disney masterpieces, the others being Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasia. (Dumbo, which also belongs to this period, isn’t in the same league.)

After that astonishing string of early classics, though, Disney quality took a hit. After a wartime lacuna during which they knocked out “package films” like Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Disney embarked on a long string of solid but unextraordinary three-star films (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter PanLady and the Tramp), broken finally by Sleeping Beauty.

Their subsequent work contained some superior efforts (101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book) and some mediocre ones (The Sword in the Stone, The Rescuers). After that it was all downhill until the Disney renaissance, beginning with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

If I had to pick a five-year period of animation history to show my kids and stick to it, I’d be sorely tempted to go with 1937 to 1942, and get those four early Disney masterpieces. But if I had to pick a 25-year period, I’m not sure I wouldn’t pick, say, 1988 to 2013.

Granted, this does require being on board with computer animation, although there’s still a lot of terrific hand-drawn animation being done in this period. (Have you seen, say, Finding Nemo? If that can’t sell you on the power of computer animation, I don’t know what would.) Just look what I’d get with that:

1. Every Pixar film ever, a filmography consists largely of masterpieces or near-masterpieces (the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up), broken only by A Bug’s Life, the Cars films and one or two recent films.

2. The best of the Disney renaissance and beyond, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Emperor’s New Groove, Lilo and Stitch and Tangled. (Plus, you know, Frozen, if you like that sort of thing.)

3. Every Studio Ghibli masterpiece from Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro to Spirited Away to Ponyo and Arrietty, and even From Up on Poppy Hill and The Wind Rises. (I would miss out on Castle in the Sky, though. Maybe I need to rethink the edges of my dating.)

4. The two best animated Bible movies ever made, The Miracle Maker and The Prince of Egypt.

5. Aardman Animations and other great stop-motion fare: Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, The Pirates!, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.

7. The Iron Giant, Ice Age, Horton Hears a Who and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

8. Some great foreign animation: Japanese, French, Russian and more.

Posted by mrscracker on Friday, May 30, 2014 4:21 PM (EDT):

SDG ,
I’d differ on the artistic quality of older Disney films.Especially something as beautiful as “Bambi.” Didn’t each cell need to be handpainted, or am I incorrect?
I personally dislike the computerized effects of new films, but that’s just me. There’s room for all kinds of differing tastes.It would be a very boring world otherwise.
And I have 4 “strong” daughters who all know how to skin,dress out, & freeze a deer.
:)
God bless!

I entirely agree about the dearth of good male role models for young boys. At the same time, girls still have a long way to go too, as I pointed out in the opening paragraphs of my review of Frozen. The reality is, neither sex is well served by the current state of Hollywood family entertainment.

I’m very far from saying there were no strong women in Golden Age Hollywood! No comparison was made or intended between the heroines of Golden Age Hollywood and modern cinema generally.

Rather, the original context was animated family fare, and specifically fairy tales. That is a genre where, in the past, heroines have generally not exactly been heroic. I only branched out into other genres to answer the question “What would a strong heroine be like in a film that also has a strong hero?”

For strong heroes in Aliens, see especially Hicks, as well as the cigar-chomping sergeant.

“The issue of strong vs not-so-strong heroines didn’t even enter my mind. I was thinking about film quality.”

I understand. I’m just pointing out that the past had weaknesses as well as strengths. There is no simple narrative of decline from a past in which everything was better to a present in which everything is worse.

As for quality, for family entertainment and certainly animation, I’d put the best of Pixar, DreamWorks and even modern Disney against the best the past had to offer and come out ahead.

Posted by Stephanie on Friday, May 30, 2014 3:52 PM (EDT):

Hollywood needs more strong and interesting male characters/heroes. My mom works at a daycare and two of the boys there recently told her, with tears in their eyes, that they wish they were a girl. With the epidemic of fatherlessness, many young boys today grow up without strong male role models, especially boys in the African American community where there is a 72.5% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Disney is doing a good job making their heroines stronger, but they need something for boys too other than Cars and Planes.

Posted by Steady State on Friday, May 30, 2014 3:26 PM (EDT):

Oh yeah! I was going to mention the other O’Hara, Maureen. The movie I mentioned above has a couple string female characters, too. The main one, her struggle is whether to forgive and in her own words “obey” her husband who kind of abandoned her. She gives a little speech at the climax where she emphatically declares he is her only husband she’ll ever have and she has an obligation to obey. Old-fashioned but from 2009.

Posted by Howard on Friday, May 30, 2014 2:57 PM (EDT):

@SDG—I’ll see your Marion Ravenwood and raise you Mary Kate Danaher from THE QUIET MAN (1951) (or really, Maureen O’Hara in any of her movies with John Wayne).

I’ll see your Princess Leia and raise you Abby ‘Old Iron Pants’ Allshard from SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949).

I’ll see your Annie and raise you Rose Sayer from THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951).

The only other movie on your list I have seen is Aliens, and I don’t remember being impressed by any “strong heroes” in that movie.

I’m once again with MrsCracker on this one.

Posted by Michael on Friday, May 30, 2014 2:25 PM (EDT):

I expecting bad, but this sounds even worse. Wow.

My daughter and I sometimes predict how SDG will receive certain films. In this case, we both thought a grade of D was about right, but I wonder how this review justifies anything north of an F.

This is one of those films I will cheer against in the box office race. Disney has truly lost its way , throwing in with a culture that no longer recognizes or acknowledges real evil.

Posted by mrscracker on Friday, May 30, 2014 2:25 PM (EDT):

SDG,
The issue of strong vs not-so-strong heroines didn’t even enter my mind. I was thinking about film quality.Traditional values come to mind, too.Both seem to be scarce these days in movies.
And certainly, heroines can both be “strong” and virtuous.Joan of Arc’s feast day is today.Pretty good film made about her in 1948.

Posted by mrscracker on Friday, May 30, 2014 2:17 PM (EDT):

Posted by Steady State on Friday, May 30, 2014 1:30 PM (EDT):

What would a strong heroine be like in a film that also has a strong hero?’
***************************
Scarlett O’Hara.
:)

Posted by Tom in AZ on Friday, May 30, 2014 2:11 PM (EDT):

@M. L. Martin: The 3rd Edition complaint was exclusively in terms of the art style in the handbook illustrations (I know because I was one of the people saying that, and now 3e is the only thing I play). 3e incorporated dozens of good ideas from years of play-testing, while keeping the game in touch with its roots. 4e apes everything in MMORPGs, even explicitly grouping classes in terms of DPS/Tank/Support—AKA Striker/Defender/Leader/Controller (Leader and Controller are two different branches of Support). They also essentially deleted all actual game-mechanics for anything except combat (because WotC was bought by Hasbro, and you can’t sell miniatures for things other than combat)—yes, you can still role-play in 4e, but only in the sense you can role-play in monopoly or chess, as far as the actual mechanics are concerned it basically doesn’t exist. They also openly divorced the game from any pretense that its world was REAL—purely physical abilities are NOT usable just once per day, and it’s ludicrous to have such a rule, e.g. Justin Alexander’s famous example of a football player making a one-handed catch (“Thank God I didn’t use this in the 3rd quarter!”). The term is “dissociated mechanics”. We grognards have logic and the principles of game design on our side; the Marie-Louises (to use another Grande Armée slang term) have nothing but inability to comprehend our complaints (i.e., most of the arguments in favor of 4e commit the informal fallacy of irrelevance).
-
But we’re getting off-topic; it was just an example of something that tried to cash in on another thing’s popularity, and wound up backfiring. That it did wind up backfiring is fairly well-established.

Posted by Steady State on Friday, May 30, 2014 2:06 PM (EDT):

So for the most part the same as a hero. Or some unlikely combination of helpless/needing to be rescued and strong super heroine. I’ve seen that in TV shows. I remember in the show Lost, the women would alternately be punching out huge men with ease and in the next scene be handily captured to show how much the male characters cared about them. The male character would suddenly have a pained look on his face when he saw she was captured and would slowly hand over his weapon.

Posted by victor on Friday, May 30, 2014 1:40 PM (EDT):

I forget if it was a TV ad or web AD for this or what, but the catchphrase “Evil. Is. Complicated.” pretty much turned me off from ever seeing this. SDG’s (non Star Trek) reviews usually confirm my gut impulses. Keep up the great work!

“What would a strong heroine be like in a film that also has a strong hero?”

Like Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Like Yu Shu Lien in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
Like Elastigirl in The Incredibles?
Like Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films?
Like Ellen Ripley in Aliens?
Like Catwoman in certain incarnations?
Like Neytiri in Avatar?
Like Annie in Speed?
Like Princess Leia in Star Wars?

Posted by Steady State on Friday, May 30, 2014 1:30 PM (EDT):

What would a strong heroine be like in a film that also has a strong hero?

For what it’s worth, I have no wish to go back to the days of passive princesses whiling away the hours waiting for someday when their prince will come. As a father with three daughters, I love strong heroines. I wish we had more of them — that they weren’t still outnumbered by males by an order of magnitude.

I do wish we could manage to have strong heroines and strong heroes. As it is now, neither boys nor girls are well served by how they’re depicted in Hollywood family films.

Posted by mrscracker on Friday, May 30, 2014 1:00 PM (EDT):

“Saving Mr. Banks” although not accurate supposedly to actual events, was at least a cute film & Emma Thompson’s great. But there’s not much good to say for Disney recently.
Someone once asked sarcastically in another blog if anyone would “want to go back to 1954” , as though it were the Dark Ages or something.Well for films, yes. Absolutely.

Posted by Howard on Friday, May 30, 2014 12:59 PM (EDT):

SLEEPING BEAUTY has something that few if any of the other films have: a portrait of indisputable mortal sin. Grave matter: check. Full knowledge: check. Full consent of the will: check. We tend to excuse sins as “mistakes”. This was inexcusable, like sin really is, but it was *obviously* so. This was not a shade of gray; this was all black.

Fairy tales are meant to teach lessons, and SLEEPING BEAUTY shows (among other things) that deliberate, knowing evil is a reality—and that some people embrace it. It also shows that even perfect dialog and mutual understanding would not make everyone like each other; the more one knew about Maleficent, the less one would like her.

Walt is dead now, and the current regime wishes to undercut any good he did, all while preserving the appearance of being wholesome and child-friendly—and make money, of course.

I dunno. I think it would be a better film if Jolie were more of a “monster woman from hell.”

Posted by Mary on Friday, May 30, 2014 12:54 PM (EDT):

Jolie’s children will always have this fond memory of her in yet another role straight from hell. Good grief. I feel sorry for her ‘in-laws’ who seem somewhat normal, watching their grandchildren on the screen with this monster-woman.

Posted by Madonna Hood on Friday, May 30, 2014 12:38 PM (EDT):

Thanks for the review. Normally, I would go to see a film any way, but this review makes me not want to see it. I did like Frozen although I didn’t think I would. I get tired of male bashing.

I can’t believe Wicked is not already a movie. Also, I can’t believe Linda Woolverton hasn’t written the screenplay.

Posted by TheTexasTwister on Friday, May 30, 2014 12:08 PM (EDT):

I was afraid that might happen. The idea of a movie about Maleficent isn’t a bad one, but making her a tragic figure the way the producers have in this film robs the story of its moral foundation. She is supposed to be evil, period.

Steven, it seems the only place you can find what you want in a fairy tale story these days is the ABC TV series Once Upon a Time. Snow White and Prince Charming are shown as both highly capable and interesting people. Individually, they are shown rescuing each other, while individually and collectively helping others.

The villains, Regina / The Evil Queen and Mr. Gold / Rumpelstiltskin, are both tragic figures, but each was given ample and real opportunities to not be evil and choose to follow the dark path willingly. Not because they were forced into it without alternative.

The show also embraces at least some vague religious concepts with Emma Swan being the product of True Love is said to be the savior who will fight the final battle and destroy the dark curse that has trapped the fairy tale characters in Storybrooke in our world, away from their magical realm of the Enchanted Forest. A curse made by Rumpelstiltskin and enacted by The Evil Queen.

For all the girl power in that series, male heroes abound with David / Prince Charming; Henry Mills (Emma’s biological son whom Regina adopted) and is trying to get Emma to believe in her past and in fairy tales so she can break the curse; and Dr. Archie Hopper / Jiminy Cricket who despite his meek personality is indeed the conscience we all remember from the familiar story.

About the only real downsides to the show are computer effects that don’t always mesh with the live actors, Mulan is hinted at being bi-sexual and Peter Pan is made into a pure villain rather than more like his Disney counterpart. Other than these objections I think this show meets most of your criteria for modern fairy tales.

Posted by Lucas on Friday, May 30, 2014 12:01 PM (EDT):

Nice review SGD! I was looking forward to seeing the movie, but now I think I’ll wait till it hits cheap theaters. I cannot stand it how all these new live action fairytale movie are so feminist. Why can’t they, like you said, have great heroins and heroes? Oh well, maybe we’ll have better luck next time…

Posted by M. L. Martin on Friday, May 30, 2014 11:40 AM (EDT):

Tom—4th Edition’s resemblance to MMORPGs is largely superficial and/or nonexistent; it’s the same kind of “they’re turning D&D into Diablo!” accusations that were made against 3E, but this time, it seemed to stick.

Actually, if you listen to some of Mike “Old Geezer” Mornard’s descriptions of how the original games played, those sound more like a persistent-world, high-competition MMORPG environment, albeit asynchronous—hence Gygax’s insistence of strict timekeeping in the 1E DMG.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Friday, May 30, 2014 11:34 AM (EDT):

My little sister said, and this seems to confirm it, that it was a naked grab for some of Wicked’s popularity. I doubt it’s going to work; “aping the thing that’s popular in such a way that it ruins what made YOU popular in the first place” is never a good idea. See also 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, AKA “MMORPGs minus the first M and the O”—huge numbers of D&D players reacted against 4th Edition not by just still playing the previous edition, but by going and buying up FIRST Edition books (from 1979-1989), and playing that.

The “Moors” are the abode of the magical creatures, so it’s correctly used as a geographical term. I get no sense that any allusion to the medieval Muslim Moors was intended.

Posted by Gail Finke on Friday, May 30, 2014 11:28 AM (EDT):

The “Moors”? Okay, there really are land formations called moors. But the bad guy is fighting someone who sounds like “Moors”? Did you get the impression that was a political statement?

Posted by Elisa on Friday, May 30, 2014 11:07 AM (EDT):

The review for this movie in today’s “Washington Post” wasn’t good either!

Posted by Steady State on Friday, May 30, 2014 11:00 AM (EDT):

Pretty much what I expected based on the previews. Decent men are inept morons and softies. Except for the occasional badboy biker like in Mom’s Night Out, who, since he’s already an outlaw can have actual masculinity. I saw a movie on TV the other day called The Lightkeepers from 2009 starring Richard Dreyfus. It had some really traditional themes and a kind of Dickens-like plot. Pretty good movie, I thought, but definitely wouldn’t do well in the box office.

Posted by M. L. Martin on Friday, May 30, 2014 10:53 AM (EDT):

Ugh.

Sleeping Beauty is one of my favorite Disney films, and I was holding out faint hopes for something thematically resembling the Star Wars Prequels—explaining the tragic fall into evil of someone who could have been great. I was pretty sure we weren’t getting that by the time the previews started showing up, but I wasn’t aware it was going to completely ignore the original.

But it’s an insoluble dilemma, I suppose—no one who invokes the powers of Hell in their final confrontation, and dies apparently unrepentant of that, is going to be good. Tragically fallen, perhaps, but not good. You either have to ignore that element or admit that a victim can, thanks to bitterness and hate, wind up as bad or worse than the oppressor, an element that seems anathema to contemporary culture.

Disney chose the way that was “quicker. Easier. More seductive.” :)

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